The invention concerns a process respectively an apparatus for filling a container with articles such as food, in particular meat.
In the food industry it is frequently necessary to temporarily store food materials as an intermediate stage in the processing such as for transfer from one processing station to another or to create a buffer storage for food material to ensure that the material is continuously available at processing sites in order to achieve a smooth operation of the process.
In some cases it is advantageous or necessary to use this storage period to effect additional cooling of the material. Specifically for meat processing when meat is de-boned prior to further processing, during the de-boning process the meat reaches a temperature that is warmer than the optimum temperature for storage and it is stored in large transport boxes or bins in which the product can not be effectively cooled by storing the bin in a chilled environment as the heat transfer within the material is much too slow and ineffective.
It is well established to mix a food grade cooling medium with the product to be cooled such as to use solid carbon dioxide particles in form of preformed pellets or as carbon dioxide snow. The cooling medium is brought into contact with the product in order to achieve sufficient or additional cooling of the material. This may be effected by the manual addition of the carbon dioxide by means of adding pellets or by depositing carbon dioxide snow onto the product using “snow horns” in which the carbon dioxide snow is generated on site.
The cooling process may also be automated by means of a cooling device such as the one described in WO 93/14358. According to WO 93/14358 the food article is frozen by contacting the article with a surface of a porous support which is impregnated with a cryogenic liquid, wherein the porous support may be formed as conveyor which is insulated by means of an enclosure.
In the food industry it is highly desirable to minimize the contact of the food products with machinery. For example, any food particles trapped in a mechanism of the machinery may lead to microbiological spoilage and contamination of the food product. It is thus desirable to design food processing equipment to have as few food contact surfaces as possible and to ensure that these are as simple and easy to clean as possible.
EP 0 632 966 A1 discloses an apparatus and method for chilling a food product which includes a food distribution device having a pair of circular members including at least one spaced-apart partition defining a food receiving area; the circular members rotate to cause food delivered to the food product proceeding area to fall into a food storage compartment in a uniform manner; and a cryogen releasing device is connected to one of the circular members which uniformly distributes a cryogenic substance to the food product within the food storage compartment.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a process respectively an apparatus for filling a container with articles such as food, wherein the articles come into contact with surfaces of the machinery as little as possible in order to provide for easy cleanability of the machinery at the condition that full flexibility for efficient cooling of the articles is maintained. It is a further object to provide for articles that have been cooled efficiently, homogenously and in an inexpensive way.